And So It Goes
by Talentless Muse
Summary: Song fic. Bulma and Yamcha reflect on their relationship and everything they did or didn't do that has brought it to this ending. No character bashing.


Disclaimer: I don't own Dragonball Z, but we already know that. If I did own it Dragonball GT would never have been made. Instead I would have gone off on an entirely different plot line, and at the end of DBZ Goku wouldn't have gone off to train Uub. That was such a disappointing ending. Also, I do not own the song "And So It Goes". It was just the inspiration for this story.

Before we get down to the actual story there are a couple things that need to be covered. This is not a happy story. Both the song and the story are about a relationship that is coming to an end. Another thing you'll want to know is that unlike all of my prior stories this one is not focused on Vegeta. This is a different look at the ending of Bulma and Yamcha's relationship. There is no character bashing. It's just the two characters reflecting on their relationship and everything that they did or didn't do that added to why it failed. With each verse it switches back and forth between Bulma and Yamcha. The first verse is from Bulma's point of view, so the second would be coming from Yamcha's and so on until the story ends.

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And So It Goes

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In every heart there is a room

A sanctuary safe and strong

To heal the wounds from lovers past

Until a new one comes along

The relationship had been dying for a long time now, and I had known so for a while as well. I suppose the reason I didn't say anything to him about it was because that would mean that I had failed in our relationship, and I wasn't used to failure. Sure I was used to minor failures and setbacks. That was all part of inventing and creating, but absolute failure was completely foreign to me. It was the thought that there was nothing I could do to repair it that kept me from acknowledging the relationship was beginning to fade.

For a while we continued to date, but the spark had long since died. We weren't in love anymore. We were just friends going out to have a little fun. The romance was gone, but the relationship stubbornly endured on.

I felt it in my heart, or rather, didn't feel it. There was now this empty feeling inside of me that I knew shouldn't be there, so I began to search for something to fill that emptiness you couldn't. As my search continued that emptiness grew, and it made me search all the harder. We saw less and less of each other and we began to grow farther apart. I say farther because at this point there was already a gap between us.

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I spoke to you in cautious tones

You answered me with no pretense

And still I feel I said too much

My silence is my self defense

We had made a great couple. I was a famous baseball player with crowds of adoring fans, and she…The only thing that overshadowed her brilliant mind was her beauty. Her beautiful eyes out shined any gem in radiance. I think I fell in love with those before I fell in love with her. I loved to caress her body as she lay next to me in bed. Her skin was so soft and her body seemed so flawless, but I digress. There was more to her than what I saw in bed.

She was wonderful to talk to at times because she would never mince words. She told you exactly what she thought, but that also made her difficult to talk to at times. Sometimes I would have liked her to be a little less forthright with her words to spare peoples' feelings. Mine included. It was hard when I wanted a little comfort after having a bad day because she was not one to dole out sympathies easily. I had to earn her sympathy, and that was something I was never up to on the days when I actually wanted it.

Eventually I began to tell her less. If I'd had a bad day I kept the details to myself, but keeping it bottled inside would put me in a sour mood for at least the rest of the day. For a little bit this seemed to make things better between us because she seemed more willing to make love, but after a while she began to complain that I never told her anything anymore. I think she also became suspicious that I was cheating on her, and she had a right to be. I had been guilty of doing that before, so it would never be out of the realm of possibilities. However, another woman had nothing do with my sudden aloof attitude. This was entirely between us.

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And every time I've held a rose

It seems I only felt the thorns

And so it goes, and so it goes

And you're the only one who knows

My relationship with him was the most beautiful thing I had ever experienced, but it was also the most painful thing I'd ever experienced. It wasn't physically painful. He never once touched me with the intent of causing me pain, and for that I was and always will be thankful. My pain was emotional, and that kind of pain is sharper and lasts so much longer than physical pain. It feels like you're dying, but you keep on living after it's over. You never feel quite the same afterwards though. 

I once heard someone say that a failed relationship is like a rose. At the time I didn't understand what they meant. How could a relationship that had gone bad be like a beautiful and elegant flower? Now I understand what they meant. When it blooms it is beautiful. This is when a relationship is new and the people involved are the most energetic about it. Its beauty lingers on for a few days, but its beauty begins to fade as time wears on. That's when the problems that may have arisen as little arguments begin to weigh heavier and heavier on the people involved. Everything's going downhill. Slowly its once beautiful petals fall off and it is reduced to a pathetic, thorny twig. It's where the problems that neither was willing to discuss have completely destroyed the relationship, but the pair is still trying to hold on in hopes that things will get better. Finally the twig is cut off, or you could just say the relationship is over. That's where we are now. Our dead twig is about to be cut off, and it will all finally be over. You will be free to go.

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But if my silence made you

Then that would be my worst mistake

So I will share this room with you

And you can have this heart to break

In the end I couldn't keep silent any longer. We needed to talk. I needed to tell her that things were not working out and that we should start seeing other people. I was sure that she felt the same way. She was only holding on because she thought I was still in love. It's what needed to happen. It would best for the both of us if we dropped the charade and ended it.

Unfortunately that wasn't what happened.

I wasn't able to bring myself to tell her those things. I was afraid to let her go, so instead I apologized for not talking to her much and reassured her that I had not been cheating. I began to make an effort to tell her things again, and she made an effort to be sympathetic. Once again things seemed to be getting better for us. It thought our relationship was finally on the mend. We were happier, but the happiness was only fleeting. As we became more comfortable with each other we began to re-encounter the same problems we'd had the first time. It was our nature I suppose. She was not a sympathetic person, but I won't lie. Neither was I. We could not fill each other's needs emotionally, and that began to show itself in other things we did.

Our arguments became more frequent and more heated. More often we would go to sleep bitter at the other person's words and lack of willingness to admit that they were wrong. The arguments were over small things. They were stupid and pointless little fights that I don't even remember what they were about, but we made them into epic wars because we had to be right. We would continue arguing on the same subject for days until a winner could be declared. More often than not she was the victor, and I would leave in a sour mood not to return for a few days.

Still we clung together. Inwardly we knew that if this kept up we would break the other's heart, but we continued in spite of that. We just couldn't let go of each other. We'd been together so long.

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And this is why my eyes are closed

It's just as well for all I've seen

And so it goes, and so it goes

And you're the only one who knows

I saw it coming, but I closed my eyes and simply refused to see that. Making myself blind to the truth was probably the worst thing I could do. If I had taken the time to look at the problems while they were still small we might have been able to fix them and we wouldn't have ever gotten to this point. We were supposed to work through our problems together, but we didn't even try to work through them alone. We just pushed them aside and pretended that they had never existed. Our denial gave those problems plenty of time to fester and grow until they became huge and we were unable to overlook them any longer. Unfortunately by then it was too late. The rift between us was to wide and there was no hope of repair.

We'd held onto each other for so long only because it was convenient. It wasn't because we hoped that we could fall back in love. There was just so much that we had seen. We needed something stable to hold onto, and it was easy to hold onto something that was already there. It was a mistake, but we were so determined to make it work…at least at first. After a while the work required to retain our relationship became too much for either of us to bear. We gave up and let it fall into disrepair.

It's a lonely business, breaking up. You feel like there's no one who can sympathize with the way you're feeling, but at the same time you're hoping the other person feels the same way so that you aren't the only one suffering. Though that doesn't bring you any comfort. You can only hope for someone to come along. Maybe they can't relate to how you're feeling, but they can at least sympathize with you.

There's no where else for us to go from here. As a pair we can't go any further, and we've come together father than we should have. Now we finally see that we aren't meant to be. I only wish we had cared to open our eyes and save ourselves from the ending it has come to. Maybe then we could have gone off and found other people that made us truly happy. Maybe then I wouldn't still have this empty feeling in my heart that I haven't been able to fill. Sure I forget about it for a while when I'm doing something I enjoy, but at night when I lie alone in my bed it comes back. I'm sorry you can't fill it, but I think that emptiness is what finally made me open my eyes and realize that this can't continue. We have to let it go.

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So I would choose to be with you

That's if the choice were mine to make

But you can make decisions too

And you can have this heart to break

I remember once when I saw you having an argument with Vegeta. I don't remember what it was about either. Probably something about his training since that seemed to be what the two of you argued about most of the time. The argument was fierce. There was no shouting, but the way you were arguing and the look in your eyes was much more intense than I had ever seen them in any of our little quarrels. I began to expect punches to be thrown at any moment. I became worried that he would lose his temper, which was quite easy for him, and seriously injure you. Just as I was about to come over to defend you in case he did throw a punch the argument stopped. Both of you just stood there for a minute glaring at each other before Vegeta gave a small nod and walked off. He didn't look like he'd won, and neither did you. I had thought you'd be furious to have drawn with him, but you seemed in better spirits than you had been for the past few days.

We made love for the first time in a while that night, and afterwards I could tell when you'd had a good argument with Vegeta. It made me jealous though. That he could make you happier by arguing with you while it only infuriated you when we argued. Why couldn't I be the one to make you happy? Why was it that he made everything better by getting you angry?

After witnessing a few more of your verbal spars I began to notice that Vegeta seemed to enjoy them as well. I began to become somewhat territorial, and I watched you more closely whenever I was around. You responded by pulling away from me even more, and we began to fight even more. Our fights weren't like the ones between you and Vegeta. Between the two of you it was a game to see who could come up with the cleverest insult. Between us it was only to tell the other off for whatever, but it really had nothing to do with him.

I wish I had done things differently. I wish I had never cheated on you when we were teenagers. Maybe then we wouldn't have come to this…but now it's too late. We've made so many bad decisions with our relationship. We've been beating it to death for a long time, and now I think it's finally time to let it die.

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And so it goes, and so it goes

And you're the only one who knows

"I'm sorry," said Bulma sighing deeply.

"So am I," said Yamcha smiling weakly and looking at the box she'd given him. They were his things that he had left at Capsule Corp over the years and never taken back. He was sure that there were many more things, but he doubted they'd ever find most of them. The building was so huge, and there were so many other smaller buildings that made up the compound. It would take him a lifetime to look for everything, but if it wasn't here he'd simply count it as lost. "Hope you have better luck next time. You deserve to find a guy that will treat you right, so don't just settle for anyone."

"The same goes for you. I hope you find someone that can cook better than I can and is more patient." There was a moment of silence as they searched for something to say.

"Well, I've got to get going. Puar's waiting out in the car," he said seeming almost nervous.

"Right, and I've got something to work on down in the lab. I'll see you around," she said as he turned around and began walking towards the driveway.

"Yeah. See ya," he said shifting the box to one arm and waving good-bye to her. It was awkward. They weren't just saying good-bye to each other. They were saying good-bye to a relationship that had stolidly persevered through Yamcha's cheating as well as his death, but they had both realized it could not take anymore. Bulma stood at the door continuing to watch as Yamcha got into his car and drove off. Only when his car had finally vanished from sight did she go back inside and close the door. It was over, and somehow she felt happier than she had in a long time.


End file.
